The referees conferred at midcourt watching the replay, but it was academic as Rice’s Connor Frizzelle and the Owls celebrated. Frizzelle hit a 21-foot 3-pointer at the buzzer over the outstretched arms of Trent Rogers to send the Tulane’s men’s basketball team to another Conference USA defeat, 50-49, at Fogelman Arena on Saturday night.

“I thought it was really close,” Tulane Coach Ed Conroy said. “Maybe it was my eyes looking at it, but I thought it had a chance that it would be waved off. They made a tough shot, so credit Rice.”

The ball seemed to leave Frizzelle’s hands with 0.8 left on the clock, and it hit nothing but the net as the red light came on.

Frizzelle set up his situation when he purposely missed the back end of two free-throw attempts when the score was 49-47. The miss was knocked out of bounds off Tulane, and given back to Rice with 2.1 seconds left setting up Frizzelle’s winner.

The Green Wave (12-4, 0-3) led 49-46 with 7.1 seconds left, and when Frizzelle got the ball across midcourt, he was fouled by Rogers, sending Frizzelle to the line. That call was made by Conroy.

“I just felt like the way it was going with seven seconds left, they had so many guys out there that could shoot, I wanted to see them instead of making one play. I wanted to see if they could make 3,” Conroy said.

The shot overshadowed Tulane’s comeback spearheaded by Ricky Tarrant, who scored 11 of his 13 points in the final five minutes and all but three of Tulane’s final points of the game.

Tarrant gave the Green Wave the 49-46 lead with 7.1 seconds left.

“It was a tough loss, we came out in the second half and played very hard,” Tarrant said. “I felt like I let my team down at the start of the game. I just played as hard as I could, and the shots started to fall.”

Tulane trailed at the half 25-18, but slowly made a comeback, thanks to solid defense and poor shooting by Rice (10-7, 1-1). At one point, 11 minutes into the half, the Owls had made only three of 19 shots, and Tulane rallied to take its first lead, 34-33.

“I thought our defense played really well, and it forced them to take tougher shots,” Conroy said. “We struggled on the offensive end, but I don’t know if it was so much our movement. We created 28 free-throw attempts, and we missed 14 and some of those were the front end of one-and-ones.”

Clearly the absence of leading scorer Kendall Timmons and center Tomas Bruha to injury showed in the first half, as Tulane went on a stretch where they missed seven consecutive shots in the first half and were outrebounded 22-12.

It appears Bruha will be gone for the season, and it also looks like Timmons, the Green Wave’s leading scorer at 13.6 points per game, also will miss significant playing time with a foot injury.